Opinion: Safety Is Greatest Benefit of Autonomous Tech

This Opinion piece appears in the Dec. 12 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

By Greg Fulton

President

Colorado Motor Carriers Association

There has been a great amount of media attention with the first delivery by autonomous truck by Otto Transportation, which recently took place on Interstate 25 from Fort Collins to Denver in Colorado. While this trip was made with a convoy of State Patrol and Colorado DOT vehicles around it, this event still represented quite an achievement.

Much of the media focus for this event was on the driverless aspect of this pilot, with many asking whether it would replace truck drivers or when we may see “ghostlike” driverless trucks traveling down our roadways.

Fulton

While the driverless storyline made good grist for the press, it unfortunately squeezed out the key message related to the safety benefits and opportunity that the technologies on the Otto truck offer to reduce crashes and highway fatalities. The integration of various safety technologies on this truck, such as sophisticated radar, laser light sensors and cameras, that will enhance safety, should have been the real story.

Will we see driverless tractor-trailers traveling on our highways in the near future? Not likely. We may see driverless vehicles on private sites where there is no mix of traffic, but don’t look for a driverless truck in your neighborhood anytime soon.

The technologies used in this pilot are similar to those that have been available in the aviation industry for many years. In fact, the technologies used in that industry are even more advanced than those used in Otto’s truck demonstration. While commercial jets have the ability to take off, set a course and land without a human pilot, we have seen no movement to eliminate airline pilots.

Much like the airline industry’s pilots, we should not expect truck drivers to be replaced by these new technologies. Rather than supplanting drivers, most see these sophisticated systems as additional tools to assist truck drivers in more safely navigating our highways by allowing them to make better decisions based on enhanced information, respond more quickly to emergency situations and make critical adjustments in the case of difficult and/or changing conditions.

The reasons that driverless trucks and planes will not occur anytime soon are both societal and technical. First, the public is not comfortable about flying on an airplane without a pilot, nor are people at ease with seeing an 80,000-pound driverless truck traveling next to them on our highways. While the systems may function exceptionally well, the public has experienced plenty of instances in their own lives where computerized systems have failed.

Further, the public also recognizes that in some cases unanticipated, bad things happen, as reflected in the recent movie, “Sully,” where various, foolproof electrical and computerized systems collectively failed, and only through the ingenuity and intervention by a professional pilot were the lives of the passengers onboard the plane saved.

As to the technology, it is impressive but one that is still being refined. The trucking industry has been using electronic sensors in our engines and our trucks for a number of years. Yet, many fleet managers will tell you that sensor problems, whether faulty signals or system failure, are the greatest contributor to downtime for their fleets.

While the autonomous system technologies have and will continue to improve, the challenge to maintain and keep these sensitive systems fully functioning when these same trucks are operating on all types of roadways, terrain and weather for more than 100,000 miles per year will be enormous.

The other substantial concern is the potential for deliberate tampering or “hacking” of these systems from external sources. While our government and largest corporations spend billions per year to secure their computer networks and systems, hardly a week goes by when we do not see a story about a major company or government agency whose records have been compromised by an outside hacker. Trying to prevent hacking of several million trucks that are owned by thousands of different companies would represent a herculean task, even though these vehicles are produced by a limited number of manufacturers.

One of the reasons that a number of government officials have expressed interest in autonomous vehicles has been due to a recent uptick in the past few years in vehicle crashes and fatalities. They point to the fact that 94% of vehicle crashes are attributed to human error, which could be reduced through the use of autonomous vehicle technology. At the same time, safety officials point out that much of this increase in crashes is associated with distracted driving, which in many cases has involved a driver texting or using a cellphone.

As we look at these new, advanced safety technologies as a means to address a rising crash problem, the fact should not be lost on us that the genesis of that predicament often lies largely with the unanticipated consequences from our society’s rapid adoption and use of another relatively new technology: cellular phones.

The Colorado Motor Carriers Association includes more than 650 companies involved in the trucking industry in the state.